I can’t quite understand why people build a home on Government land.
Often in these cases they didn’t. The government imminent domained the property and let the houses and occupants stay. There are some Indian tribes that own city property that offer 99 year leases. You ‘own’ the house, but not the land (Palm Springs CA being the most notable).
In the case of the Forest Service, the people there serve as a vehicle to get fire money.
The wood may not be commercially valuable, but the USFS can go to Congress and say they need $X million to fight the forest fire - there are 200, or however many, families with homes in the forest.
In many cases, the people were there first, and then the Congress declared it a national park or national forest.
Now evicting people from their homes isn’t right at all.
Often, it WASN’T Federal Land when they built it. But the land got appropriated by Club Fed, and as a “concession” to the previous owners, they are allowed to “lease” the land for a nominal fee. . .
When these parks get set up - there are most often homes already within the new boundaries - they were there first.
The one I love the best is when, up in upper NY state when the Onondagas reclaimed some of their land, there were non-Indians with their homes that were now on Reservation land. They then paid property taxes to the reservation. A few years in, their taxes were raised and they screamed about it.
It was pointed out to them that if they wanted to, instead, pay their taxes to the state, they were welcome to - but when they discovered that the state bill would be many times more, they settled down.